Audacity for Mac

Comprehensive audio recorder and editing suite

For audio editing, look no further than open source wonder Audacity. You can record live, convert old records and tapes to digital, cut, copy and splice files and much more. This version is updated regularly, and despite the 'beta' tag is very...View full description

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Softonic review

Excellent

9

For audio editing, look no further than open source wonder Audacity. You can record live, convert old records and tapes to digital, cut, copy and splice files and much more. This version is updated regularly, and despite the 'beta' tag is very stable.

Interface

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Whether you choose the stable or beta series, Audacity is not very attractive, and can at first look complex. However, with a little experimentation it soon becomes a very usable application.

For live sound and digitizing old media, you need to feed audio into your computer via a cable. Your audio-in, or mic should be set up by default, but otherwise can be found in Preferences. Recording is then as easy as hitting the red button on the Audacity interface.

Easy to use

What makes Audacity great in this regard is that editing recordings is really simple, not tricky like some professional apps! Using the Highlight tool you can quickly cut, copy, or add effects to parts of tracks. Make a mistake and you can undo as many steps backward as you like, meaning you can experiment knowing nothing can be broken! As you can use up to 16 channels at once, Audacity gives users lots of flexibility.

Editing MP3 and other digital files is just as easy. Drag them into Audacity to open, and then do what you like with them. Adding fade ins or outs is easy, and you can save in whatever format you like. Audacity supports ID3 tags, so you can add all the meta data you like to saved tracks. There is lots more to Audacity, and luckily it has extensive documentation available online or to download.

Bug Fixes:
Shaped dither was corrupted and too loud on all stereo exports except FLAC.
Keyboard Preferences: some Edit and Align commands for different sub-menus showed the same name.
Recordings stopped with "Stop and Set Cursor" shortcut could not be undone.
In locales that use comma for decimal separator:
Text boxes with slider in Nyquist effects only produced whole numbers when using comma to enter a fractional number. Text boxes without slider still have this problem.
Built-in generators produced silence after running a Nyquist effect.
Frequent crashes occurred on importing audio files on some machines.
Files did not open using Finder "Open with", double-clicking the file or dragging the file to the Audacity icon.
Changes and Improvements:
Tracks Menu:
The separate commands that aligned track start or end with the cursor or with selection start are combined into "Cursor/Selection Start" commands.
"Align and Move Cursor" renamed to "Move Selection when Aligning".
Label Tracks:
Labels Editor now allows empty labels to be saved on closing the editor.
TabB and Shift+Tab when the label track has focus now always move forwards or backwards respectively to the nearest label.
Audio Unit plug-ins detected by Audacity on launch are now not loaded until chosen from the Effect menu. This should speed up launch and avoid crashes at launch due to misbehaving Audio Units.

Changes

Bug Fixes:
Shaped dither was corrupted and too loud on all stereo exports except FLAC.
Keyboard Preferences: some Edit and Align commands for different sub-menus showed the same name.
Recordings stopped with "Stop and Set Cursor" shortcut could not be undone.
In locales that use comma for decimal separator:
Text boxes with slider in Nyquist effects only produced whole numbers when using comma to enter a fractional number. Text boxes without slider still have this problem.
Built-in generators produced silence after running a Nyquist effect.
Frequent crashes occurred on importing audio files on some machines.
Files did not open using Finder "Open with", double-clicking the file or dragging the file to the Audacity icon.
Changes and Improvements:
Tracks Menu:
The separate commands that aligned track start or end with the cursor or with selection start are combined into "Cursor/Selection Start" commands.
"Align and Move Cursor" renamed to "Move Selection when Aligning".
Label Tracks:
Labels Editor now allows empty labels to be saved on closing the editor.
TabB and Shift+Tab when the label track has focus now always move forwards or backwards respectively to the nearest label.
Audio Unit plug-ins detected by Audacity on launch are now not loaded until chosen from the Effect menu. This should speed up launch and avoid crashes at launch due to misbehaving Audio Units.

Audacity 2.2.2 for Mac

User reviews about Audacity

by Lavinia McGrath

Video go's blur and unable to see how to reduce noise after recording!.
The video showing how to clean up after recording on Audacity go's blur so am unable to see what to do! I am old skool, still use vinyl and want to record all my vinyl but unless you have kept up to date with technology some of the words are so difficult to understand.I need a more step by step guide, am totally lost but I will carry on searching until I understand.Pros: I can copy my vinyl on to computer.its free.Cons: idiot proof writing for us older non technico peopleMore

reviewed onMarch 26, 2017

by Varghese John

very good one.
very nice software very good for audio edting can do amazing jobs